Stereotype Threat psych and edu

Key Terms

• Stereotype threat: risk of confirming negative stereotypes about one’s race, ethnicity, or gender

  • Individuals perform more poorly on a task when a relevant stereotype or stigmatized social identity is made salient in the performance situation 

• Working memory capacity 

  • Type of memory that's used to focus attention on temporarily activated info of interest while inhibiting other info that’s irrelevant to the task at hand 

    • Temporary storage + attentional capability

Testing working memory 

• 2 tasks performed concurrently 

  • Processing tasks 

    • Is (2 x 3) - 5 = 1 true? 

  • Memory span task: given a word after each processing task, and recall the words later

Hypothesis 

• Other studies of stereotype threat have focused on affective response 

  • Stereotype threat → anxiety → diminished performance 

• This study focused on cognitive response 

  • Stereotype threat → reduction in working memory capacity → diminished performance 

• Stereotype threat places an extra burden on cognitive resources 

3 Experiments

• Men and women on a math task 

• Caucasians and Latinxs on a general intelligence task 

• Reduction in working memory as a mediator of the effects of stereotype threat on performance

Study 1: Participants

• N = 31 male, 28 female UG Psych students 

• All had scored 500+ on the math SAT (or ACT equivalent)

  • 500 is mean 

• “Regardless of what you personally believe, do you think there is a stereotype about women having less mathematical ability than men?” 

  • 1 to 7 rating, only those with 4+ participated

Study 1: Procedure

• Randomly assigned to 2 descriptions of the test

  • Control: test is a reliable measure of working memory capacity 

  • Stereotype threat: 

    • Test is a measure of quantitative capacity 

    • Gender differences in math performance might relate to differences in quantitative capacity ← primes the stereotype 

• “Performance would be based on math accuracy and number of words recalled” 

• Given a working memory task (72 trials of equation + word) 

• DV = # of words recalled (not math accuracy)

Study 1: More Measures 

• Anxiety scale: self-report of how much they felt anxious, comfortable, jittery, worried, at ease, nervous, relaxed, calm 

  • 1 to 7 scale 

  • Some items reversed, mean taken 

• Perceived difficulty 

  • 1 to 7 scale

Study 1 Results: Interaction (gender x condition)

• Men and women completed equally in the control group

• Women suffered in the stereotype threat group 

  • No effect on men

• Women in the stereotype threat group recalled fewer words than men in the stereotype threat condition and fewer than women in the control condition 

• Other differences were n.s.

• Anxiety n.s. 

• Perceived difficulty 

  • Within the control condition, ratings were not significantly different 

  • Within the stereotype threat condition, women related the test as more difficult than did men

Study 2: Method 

• N = psych students 

  • 20 latinas 

  • 13 latinos 

  • 27 white women 

  • 13 white men

• 2 (Latinix x white) x 2 (stereotype threat vs. control) factorial design 

Study 2: Procedure

• Same as study 1, except for manipulation 

• Stereotype threat condition: 

  • Told that the test is highly predictive of performance on intelligence tests and 

  • Told that their performance would be used to help establish norms for different groups 

  • Asked to indicate their ethnicity before beginning

Study 2: More Measures

• Anxiety 

• Perceived difficulty 

• Math and verbal SAT scores

Study 2 Results: Interaction (ethnicity x condition)

• Latinx in the stereotype threat condition recalled fewer words than whites in the stereotype threat conditions and than Latinx in the control condition 

• Other differences were n.s.

• Anxiety: 

  • Latinx in the stereotype threat condition reported more anxiety compared to Latinx in the control 

  • The stereotype threat condition didn’t affect anxiety in Whites 

• Perceived difficulty: 

  • Control group: Whites and Latinx saw the test as equally difficult 

  • Stereotype threat group: Latinx rated the test more difficult than did Whites

Study 3 Method

• N = 31 females UGs

• All had math SAT 500+ 

• All reported knowledge of math stereotypes 

Study 3 Procedure

• Competed tasks in groups of 3 

• Randomly assigned to conditions 

  • Control: 

    • Participants were grouped with 2 other female participants, led by a female experimenter 

    • Told that the study's purpose was to collect normative data on college students 

  • Stereotype threat: 

    • Participant group with 2 male confederates, led by a male experimenter 

    • Told that the study's purpose was to collect normative data on men and women

Experiment 3: Tasks

• Working memory task: count # vowels in a sentence; at the end of each sentence, given word to recall 

• 60 trials 

• Then…math test

  • Control: told it was a pilot test for research on problem-solving processes 

  • Stereotype threat: 

    • Told it was a reliable test of math aptitude 

    • Asked to indicate gender

• DVs 

  • # of words recalled 

  • Math test performance

Study 3 Results 

• Women in a stereotype threat condition 

  • Recalled fewer words than women in control condition 

  • Were less accurate on the math test than women in control

Results: Mediation Analysis 

• Level of stereotype threat predicts math test performance 

• Relationship between stereotype threat and working memory capacity and math test performance

Why should we care? 

• There are cognitive deficits associated with stereotype threat 

  • When stereotypes are primed, members of stigmatized groups experience interference with attentional resources, which in turn 

    • Stereotype threat → reduction in working memory capacity → diminished performance 

• Stereotypes can prevent stigmatized groups from performing to their full potential